A Baptism of Repentance

And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Mark 1:4-5

I have hesitated to write this story. It is sacred to me. Intimate. But just as Cleopas and his companion (wife?) were compelled to run back to Jerusalem after their Emmaus encounter with the risen Lord, eager to tell the rest what they had witnessed, I too am compelled to share what God has done for me. And I honestly don’t think my dad would mind. I think he might approve actually. This is the long-awaited sixth letter.

I don’t really know how it began. I only know how it ended. It ended in a baptism of tears on the floor by my bed in the St. Francis cottage at a retreat center in North Carolina. Everything was washed away in that flood and something like scales fell from my eyes. I’m not sure my soul has ever seen such colors before. 

All my life I related to my dad through a blurry lens of self-protection, unable to really see or receive the love that he didn’t really know how to show me anyway. We both longed for the other's embrace, loved each other deeply, but could never quite figure out how to connect. We were like awkward dance partners, self-consciously stepping on each other's toes, never able to find the beat or hear the music. So we mostly just gave up. 

He died on my watch. Two years ago. From Covid. It was brutal. I can’t even think about it without a lump rising in my throat, tears welling up fresh, and a soft “Oh Daddy” escaping my lips.

I never knew a man who loved Jesus more fully and more consistently than Dad did, ever since he encountered him just before encountering my mom in college. My parents fell in love with Jesus and with each other at about the same time. I was their first child. They were only 20 years old. 

But those last few months of his life, fifty years later, and especially those last days in the hospital, he was becoming an increasingly distorted version of himself. Something unsettling was happening to his brain even before Covid hit, but when he was admitted to the hospital with trouble breathing, he became angry and fearful to the point of hallucination. By the time his organs began shutting down and we knew the end was approaching, we were all both stunned and slightly relieved that this intense suffering was ending so quickly. Others on the ICU floor had been holding on for weeks. Dad died within ten days, days which included both Thanksgiving and his 70th birthday.

At the funeral, my mom and four siblings wrote beautiful letters to be read by the minister to the congregation, highlighting what a wonderful man dad was. I was jealous of their experiences. I wondered if they were telling the whole truth or if I had just missed out on knowing the man they knew. Eyebrows went up when the sixth expected letter failed to appear. A chronic people-pleaser, my discomfort was immense. But what could I do? Even my favorite dad stories revealed his flaws. I couldn’t share those.

I barely had time to figure out how to grieve my dad’s death before additional sorrows began piling up, one after another, as my own children revealed to us many surprising ways that we had failed them as parents. Their suffering is real. The weight of it has been crushing. I loved them more than my own flesh and gave them everything I could to help them thrive. How could I have missed some of the most important things, help when they needed it most?

So much healing, forgiving work with my kids ensued, but the grief never abated. It snuck up on me from time to time, but I’d brush it aside. I didn’t know what to do with it. I was staying busy while also trying to stay present, open, and honest—to God, to my kids, to myself.  It was in this state that I arrived at the retreat center in October, three hours before the rest of my group was due to arrive. I needed a little bit of extra time to get used to the silence, so I walked the grounds and visited the library. 

Sure enough, in that serene place, the ever-present knot in my chest refused to be ignored any longer, screaming for my attention. I tried to settle in a cozy chair. Restless, I’d immediately get up and walk. That wasn’t working either. I had no idea what was happening to me. The undefined sadness confused me—I wasn’t really sure which of my sorrows I was even trying to grieve. I went to the library and picked up a book to read, yes, to distract myself. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography. On the page I flipped to randomly, she is writing about her father, how much she loves him, adores him, and how much he loves her. I stuffed the book in my purse, grabbed my room keys from the front desk, and began walking hurriedly, almost running, to my room. I barely made it through the door into my room before I was on my knees, weeping uncontrollably. 

I had a dad like that. One just as good as Therese of Lisieux’s. He was the best possible dad. I was the apple of his eye. He wanted me to trust him, to respect him, to love him. I wanted nothing more than to please him, to make him proud. And we missed each other. The grief of that realization still grabs me. But something broke in that moment and I both forgave him everything and repented wholeheartedly for how I had hurt him by withholding forgiveness all those years. I had longed for that moment of deliverance for years but didn’t know how to get there. It took my own heart being broken over my own children to guess what my own dad’s must have been like. And oh, how it hurts to know that I hurt him like that. He never deserved it. And neither did I. 

What strikes me about John’s baptism of repentance in the gospel of Mark is that it is a necessary prerequisite for bringing in God’s kingdom—“Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” When I was younger, I thought of that repentance as being for bad people who would go to hell otherwise.  But God is a lover, a healer, a reconciler, and I stood up from that bedside a freed person. I could feel it almost immediately. I still do. I see all kinds of other things differently too. As those baptismal waters continue to wash over me, other debris has surfaced to be washed away, cleansing deep wounds. There is laughter in my house again. God’s kingdom is a bit nearer.

I received a new baptism of repentance and I know that God was well-pleased. I don’t know, maybe Dad knows something about it too. I hate to think that he never got to witness the fulfillment of one of his deepest longings just because he died too soon. 

P.s. I found the Lisieux book in my purse when I got back home. I’m sorry. I promise to return it.